The postwar courts were set up with the assumption that it did occur. This put the Nazis in a position that there only defense was they were following orders, were not involved, or knew nothing about it.
Hitler is reported to have told people the Jewish extermination stories were black propaganda like that of WWI where German soldiers were accused of cutting the hands off Belgian children.
Himmler in a magazine interview before the end of the war is quoted that the Jews were not being exterminated.
Lammers testified he asked Himmler about the extermination rumors and was told the Jews were being deported and resettled in the East. Lammers said he was shown photo albums of the resettlement.
Alfred Rosenberg, the administrator of the Nazi occupied eastern territories, testified that the Nazi rhetoric about extermination of the Jews was not what the war crimes court took it to mean, but rather, the goal of breaking Jewish political power.
Julius Streicher testified the final solution to the Jewish question was the establishment of a Jewish homeland into which Jews would be resettled from all over the world after Germany won the war. He said he had heard the accusation of the extermination of the Jews, but did not believe it.
Hans Frank, who administered occupied Nazi Poland, testified he did not know the Jews were being killed, but must have unwittingly participated in the activities after hearing Rudolf Hoess testify.
Hoess was tortured to get his "confession" and allegedly told another prisoner that there were ways to get people to confess to anything. His affidavit is full of contradictions and information that is untrue.
Albert Speer stated his exposure to the extermination of the Jews was he was once told not to go to Auschwitz.
Hermann Goering testified he didn't know anything about it as he was too busy running the German economy.
Like Hoess, Adolf Eichmann testified to a lot of nonsense. For example, he said he visited an extermination gas chamber that used the exhaust from a captured Russian submarine. The problem is the Germans never captured any Russian submarines.
Nazis who confessed to knowing about and participating in the extermination of the Jews seem to have always inserted nonsense in their testimony to let skeptics know they were lying.
The confessions of Kurt Gerstein and Perry Broad are similarly full of nonsense.

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[F]orce can only settle questions of power, not of right. - Clyde N. Wilson

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